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Family Road Trip Without the Rage? It's Possible!

by Miranda McCoy on July 24, 2012

Miranda McCoy

About the Author

Miranda McCoy is a barely 30 married mom of two, and a full-time reporter and part-time contract writer. She is a nature-loving, green-living girl from the Appalachian Mountains who enjoys reading, writing, acting, and, most of all, spending time with her children.

About the Blog

WhatToExpect.com supports Word of Mom as a place to share stories and highlight the many perspectives and experiences of pregnancy and parenting. However, the opinions expressed in this section are those of individual writers and do not reflect the views of Heidi Murkoff of the What to Expect brand.

Not too long ago, we took off on an 11-day family road trip. We packed the minivan and my husband and I along with our two children — a five-year old and a three-year old — sandwiched ourselves into the spaces not taken up by luggage and snacks and set off on an adventure.

We left the cool, stormy Appalachian Mountains and headed south to heat, to humidity, to the seaside, to Disney World!

I had planned for several weeks for this trip, focusing on ideas to occupy our kids while we are in the van. Our littles have always traveled well, thankfully. We've taken long road trips with our kids beginning with our first child, my son, when he was only four weeks old. And I think that's because we live in such a rural area and are so used to driving long distances to get absolutely anywhere, such as an hour and half round-trip to Wal-mart. Such is life in the mountains.

This year I purchased small toy items from a local Dollar Store before leaving for our trip. I bought enough items so that the children could turn in a ticket every 75-100 miles or so to receive a prize.

We also played a license tag game. And, we spent some time naming all 50 states when we began our trip and checked off the states whose license plates that we saw. To make it even more fun, we tried naming the capitals of each state. I did not expect my littles to know them, but I was surprised at how laughingly bad I was at the game.

Another favorite game was a simple version of road-side bingo. We made a list of five items each that we would like to see on our trip. For example, my little man added a crane and bulldozer. My little lady hoped to see a playground and horses.

I also always make sure that we have a well-supplied snack bag and cooler along with a toy backpack for each child that holds books, a notebook (we always do this for each trip, they can "journal" about our trip and draw pictures of the things that they see), and other small items. We also always make sure we bring along a small pillow and blanket for each child because our internal thermostats differ so greatly.

How do you survive lengthy drives with little ones? Tell us below in the comments section!